With the growth of the Internet as a medium of commerce, companies have spent a large amount of money developing electronic invoices, Web forms, Web pages Web sites, and the like typically using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a markup language that describes the visual formatting of information. Using a Web browser, the HTML tags are interpreted and used to display the content of the Web page in the desired manner. While this process typically produces visually pleasing results in the presentation of online electronic content, forms, documents, and the like, electronically rendered HTML typically does not print in a predictable manner. Web pages are generally designed for display on a standard computer screen and not on a printed page. A Web page, when laid out on tangible media, may cover the length of several standard pages. If a user selects to print a Web page using the browser's print command, there are few reliable ways to control page breaks, margins, and the like. Moreover, there is generally no way to provide for headers or footers, or to easily break tables across print pages.
Electronic print formatting, such as provided by MACROMEDIA INC.'S FLASHPAPER™, ADOBE SYSTEMS INC.'s PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT™ (PDF), and the like, provide platform independent formatting that may be displayed in the same manner on any variety of computer system, while printing with a high degree of accuracy and fidelity to what is electronically displayed. In order to provide consumers with such print-formatted material, parties will typically create a dual system in which the content is initially presented to a user via an HTML page, but will also provide a link to the same information created in an electronic print format, such as a PDF or FLASHPAPER™ format, or even to a document format, such as MICROSOFT CORPORATION's WORD™ DOC format, COREL COMPUTER COMPANY'S WORDPERFECT™ WPD format, Rich Text Format (RTF), and the like. Therefore, if the consumer desires to print out the information contained on the Web page, he or she selects the link to the print-formatted document and may download and/or print the document in a high print fidelity.
One of the problems with this dual system is maintenance of the system. Updating the underlying HTML is relatively easy. A Web developer or content specialist edits the information or the HTML formatting and the Web page is changed. However, in the dual system, additional steps and separate applications will typically be used, such as WORD™, WORDPERFECT™, and the like, to edit the underlying document which may further be converted into an electronic print format such as PDF through ADOBE SYSTEMS INC.'s ACROBAT™, FLASHPAPER™ through MACROMEDIA INC.'s MACROMEDIA FLASH MX™, and the like. Thus, updating the dual presentation system becomes a considerable amount of work, which typically translates into a higher cost.
Solutions have been presented that allow a document format, such as PDF, FLASHPAPER™, WORD™ DOC, WORDPERFECT™ WPD, RTF, or the like, to be printed from the output of an HTML document. In such applications, the HTML code that is written is eventually converted into an electronic print-formatted document, such as PDF PDF, FLASHPAPER™, WORD™ DOC, WORDPERFECT™ WPD, RTF, or the like, when the Web page is displayed or printed. In these systems, however, a proprietary intermediate markup language is typically used. The HTML is usually converted into this proprietary markup, which is then rendered into the target format.
A print-formatted document may also be created simply by using a printer driver specifically directed for the particular print formatting. ADOBE SYSTEMS INC.'s ACROBAT DISTILLER™, is a print driver that generates a PDF file output of any document printed from the active application. For example, if a user desires to print a Web page directly from MICROSOFT CORPORATION's INTERNET EXPLORER™, he or she may select the ACROBAT DISTILLER™ print driver, and then select the print function of INTERNET EXPLORER™. The target Web page will be printed to a PDF document. However, the print object processed by ACROBAT DISTILLER™ is still prepared by INTERNET EXPLORER™, which means that headers, footers, page breaks, and the like, may or may not be handled in a predictable manner. The resulting PDF file may not faithfully reflect the Web page as it appeared in the Web browser. Moreover, because the ACROBAT DISTILLER™ was used in this manner, the metadata supporting the PDF file will generally not include the actual text of the printed document. The PDF document of the printed Web page will likely be a complete graphical rendition of that page. This complete graphical rendition typically diminishes the quality of the print out in addition to making the resulting PDF document non-text searchable.